|
|
|
|
Clark Century Farm
People Home
Search
Print
Login
Add Bookmark
The Century Farm of Mr. And Mrs. Fred J. Clark In Sempronius
Changing Hands Through the Daughters, This Farm Was Owned by Lelands, Browns, and Woods Before Present Owners Bought It.
By Charles L. Messer
(Originally published in Farm Journal Magazine in 1952)
Although Storke’s History of Cayuga County fails to mention either Jonah Brown, who settled in Sempronius in 1816, or Jacob Leland, who was living in the town when Brown arrived, it does, for some unaccountable reason, list, among the early settlers, several families who came in later. Yet "The Leland Magazine", a substantially-bound book that was published in 1850, almost thirty years before Storke’s History was published, indicates that some of the Lelands had been laid to rest in the cemetery of the First Baptist Church of Sempronius very early in the 1800’s.
The Leland Family in America, itself, traces back directly to Henry Leland who was born in England in 1625. After marrying Margaret Badcock he came to America in 1652 and died in Sherburne, Massachusetts on April 4, 1680. One of his sons was Ebenezer. One of Ebenezer’s sons was James, who married Hannah Larned. Among the children of this couple were Moses and Thankful. Thankful married Lemuel Powers, another early settler in Sempronius, who came from the town of Stillwater in Saratoga County, whence came many of the other early settlers of the town.
Leland Descendent Becomes Wife of President
Thankful and Lemuel Powers’ son, Lemuel, was the father of Abigail, who became the wife of Millard Fillmore, thirteenth president of the United States.
Moses Leland was the father of Jacob, who married Anna Taylor. These Lelands came from Sutton, Worcester County, Massachusetts, and they were among the early settlers in Sempronius, as mentioned above.
Jonah Brown Settles in 1816
On November 25, 1816 Jonah Brown arrived in the township of Sempronius with his wife and family after having traveled by the overland route from Gloucester town, Providence County, Rhode Island.
His wife was Sally Leland, one of seven daughters of Jacob and Anna Taylor Leland, who had stayed behind with her husband when her family came west.
The journey had taken about 18 days for Jonah had started on November 7th. When they arrived they stayed the first night at Eldad Hardy’s. (Jonah’s wife was a sister of Eldad’s wife, Anna). The children were so tired they went to bed supperless, but their parents had much to talk about.
Moses, aged 12, and Lindol, then, the oldest children, had walked most of the distance. The goods, and women, and smaller children were brought by oxen with a horse leading them.The next day they unloaded their goods at the home of Sally’s mother. Her father had been dead for a year or more. They lived there for two years and then moved in the fall into their new log home, which Moses and Lindol helped to build.
Present House Built
Blake Griffin, husband of one of Jonah’s daughters, and a well-known carpenter, built the substantial farm house some years later, which is the very house in which Mr. and Mrs. Fred J. Clark are now living, together with their youngest son, Rolland.The oldest deed to Jonah’s first tract of land in Sempronius is missing from the family records, but a second parcel of 50 acres was bought in 1824 for $250 from Thomas G. Atwater, husband of one of the Leland girls, who had previously moved westward to Portland, Chautauqua County. The deed to this parcel is owned by the family today.
Another part of the farm Jonah subsequently acquired had been set off in 1826 from the Leland farm for the youngest daughters,
Prudence and Betsy. Prudence Leland never married and her mother lived with her until her death.Jonah Brown’s other sons were
Levi, Jonah and Alba, while his daughters were Louisa, Almira, Betsy and Sally. There were also one or two others who died in infancy.Moses Leaves Home
Young Moses worked on the family farms with his father until he was 21 years old. Then, being of age, he returned to the place in Rhode Island where he had been born, to visit some relatives. In the east he worked on a canal that was being built and while there met his future wife, Miss
Sarah Matthewson, who was a weaver in the cotton and woolen mills. Moses was taken sick with the measles, followed by a severe cold and his relatives despaired of his life but he finally managed to pull through. When he was 26 he married Sarah, who was three years his senior and in that same year, 1830, the bridal couple returned to Sempronius and bought the farm where David Atwood now lives, and built their log house.Moses and Sarah had seven children – but they were all daughters:
Clementine, Alma, Sylvania, Sophronia, Sarah, Eliza and Mary.Most of the original Jonah’s children decided to move further west. Some of them settled in Indiana and some in Michigan. In passing, it is interesting to note that Alba, his youngest son, who moved to Michigan, had seven sons, whereas his oldest son, Moses, had seven daughters.
Youngest Daughter Marries William Wood
Mary, Moses Brown’s youngest daughter had been born on March 25, 1845 and on September 18, 1867 she married
William Wood, who had been born a year earlier. William and Mary had four children, Jeremiah, Howard, Clifford and Maud. Clifford Wood was born on May 5, 1872 and is now living with his wife in Montville, near Moravia. Maud, the youngest, was born on November 25, 1875, almost five months after her father had died, on June 4th of the same year. She is still living.Twelve years later the widow, Mary Wood, married for the second time. Her husband was
David Atwood, a Civil War veteran. Married on September 11, 1887, David lived but a few short months, passing on January 26, 1888, but a son, David Atwood, Jr., was born on September 18, 1888. Thus two of Mary Brown’s children, Maud Wood and David Atwood, Jr. never saw their fathers.After Mary’s first husband died she moved over to her father’s home, but when she married David Atwood they moved into the township of Homer in Cortland County. Immediately after the death of her second husband, however, Mary Brown Wood Atwood and the infant David, by her second husband, returned to live with Moses, where her mother, Sarah Matthewson Brown, had passed on in 1870. She and her children stayed with Moses Brown until his death in 1893.
Clifford Wood Marries
On January 17, 1894, Mary’s son, Clifford Wood, married
Carrie Fuller of Sempronius. Within a short time this couple bought the farm from the estate of Jonah Brown, Jr., his mother’s uncle, a few month’s after his death. Jonah was 20 years younger than his oldest brother, Moses. Clifford and Carrie Wood had only three children, Norma, born January 28, 1897, Cecile, born September 19, 1900, and Ava, born October 27, 1906.Cecile Wood was married on September 3, 1918 to
Fred J. Clark, also of Sempronius. Fred had been born on July 13, 1895.As soon as they were married, Fred and Cecile contracted to buy the home farm from her father, Clifford Wood. Although it was rather hard going in the early 1920’s when they were buying the farm, Fred and Cecile finally completed their payments. Their children were
Donald, Vivian,John Brown Jr., a Forty-Niner
At the age of 21, young
Jonah Brown, Jr., who remained a bachelor all his life, set off by himself to see the rest of this great country to the west, and was one of the early forty-niners in the gold rush in California. When he heard that his old brothers, Levi, Lindol, and Alba, had moved away, young Jonah returned home to take care of his parents. With the $2500 he is alleged to have saved from his gold rush days, he bought the home farm from them, but whether he was much of a farmer or not, is open to conjecture. It is known, however, that he was a great lover of hunting.Moses, his oldest brother, on the other hand, was a thrifty farmer. He had a dairy from which he made butter and sold it in Homer and Cortland. He also made a lot of maple syrup to sell and sold a considerable quantity of lumber which was sawed in local sawmills. It is also reported that Moses invested $10,000 in stock in the first railroad that came to Cortland and Homer. Although he lost this first investment, it failed to daunt him and it is reported that he later made a lot of money in railroad stocks.
Moses Raises Peas for Stock
According to Clifford Wood, his grandson, Moses told him that he had never eaten white bread until he came to Sempronius with his family. And Moses, too, was one of the first farmers in his section of the county to appreciate the value of peas for both fodder and grain for the livestock. He used to raise about an acre and a half of old fashioned black-eyed Martha peas and threshed them separately with a flail. Then he had them ground together with corn, oats, and barley for feed.
Moses also raised a lot of pork and a story is told of one of his hogs that was so big and fat they could hardly get it out of the hog house – it weighed 700 pounds. For cash Moses sold seed grain. In the spring he sowed two bushels of oats to one of barley.
Soft Maple Sugar Used
And Moses never bought flour for his white bread. He always had his wheat ground at the mill in Dresserville. While he like his white bread, Moses rarely had any white sugar on his table. It was usually soft maple sugar, kept in jars, or crocks, as they called them.
But he also had an apple orchard, and every year most of his crop of 200 bushels or more was dried on racks over the kitchen stove by his large family of daughters. These dried apples, is was said, were sold for coloring and for caulking ships. The girls were allowed to keep a good share of this money to buy cloth for their clothes. Some of the apples, however, were cooked out of doors in a big brass kettle and made into boiled cider apple sauce, which was also stored for the winter in crocks.
William Wood, Mary’s first husband, was in "General training" prior to the Civil War, but when he was called to active duty he was able to pay for another man to take his place, as was customary and permissible in the War of the Rebellion.
Dairy and General Farming
Clifford Wood was engaged in general farming most of the time he was on the farm, having a small dairy. For cash crops he grew potatoes and tapped his sugar bush, from which he made large quantities of maple syrup. In the early 1900’s Clifford’s milk was sold to the cheese factory at Lake Como but later, when a creamery was set up in Sempronius, he delivered his milk there up to as late as 1922. That year his son[-in-law] Fred Clark, sold his milk to the Clover Leaf Farms; then to Sheffield Farms Company in Homer. Later he joined the Dairymen’s League.
The Clark Farm today consists of 131 acres, for in 1931
Earl McConnell’s old farm of 53 acres was purchased. There are about 70 acres of tillable land, 15 acres in a woodlot, and the rest is permanent pasture. Fred himself owns 26 head of cattle, some grades, some purebreds; while Rolland has a total of 12 head, all purebred Guernseys. And they own a good purebred bull, too. In addition to the feed crops of hay, grain, and silage corn that they raise, this year Rolland had a three-acre piece of beans.Fred Almost Sold Farm
Fred used to have a larger herd of cows but illness in 1943 prompted him to sell off his dairy – in fact, he almost sold his farm. Then however, as his two younger boys grew up, they began to build up the herd again and it is now on the increase.
Family in Politics
In politics Clifford Wood was a Democrat but he served as assessor in the town for several years. Howard, his oldest brother, also served the town as a road superintendent. David Atwood, Jr., grandson of Moses Brown, was also a Democrat, and served the town of Sempronius as a supervisor for eight years, while his nephew,
John Forbes, the son of Mrs. Maude R. Wood Forbes, (Clifford Wood’s sister) was also a Democratic supervisor for eight years.Fred Clark, the present owner of the farm, is a Republican, and served as an assessor for eight years. It is also recorded that both Moses and Jonah Brown were Republicans.
For many years there used to be an old log church, known as the "block meeting house" just east of the present Clark farm, which was used for church services. When Moses Brown built a new carriage house, that, too, served as a meeting house, and as a school for a number of years. Moses helped substantially in the building of the Sempronius Baptist Church but he never joined.
Active in Farm Organizations
Mr. and Mrs. Fred Clark and their family are all members of the Sempronius Baptist Church, and Mrs. Clark is the treasurer. They belong to the Dresserville Grange and Mrs. Clark is the secretary. The two are members of the Farm Bureau and have been for many years. Mrs. Clark is also active in Home Bureau work, serving as present family life leader for the Double Towners unit.
Mrs. Clark Taught School
A graduate of Moravia High School Teacher’s Training Class in 1918, Mrs. Clark taught in local schools in Sempronius and other nearby townships, including one in Onondaga County, for a total of 16 years. All of the Clark children attended Moravia High School and all graduated except Donald, who left at the end of three years because he wanted to get to working as quickly as possible.
It is interesting to note that, at one time or another, all four of her children have had their mother as their teacher.
Used with permission from Farm Journal Media
| Linked to | David Atwood David M Atwood Jonah Brown, Jr. Mary E. Brown Moses Brown Fred James Clark Carrie Fuller Cecil Cora Wood Clifford L Wood William Mather Wood | |
Find
Surnames
Bookmarks
Places
Dates
Cemeteries
Search
Photos
Documents
Histories
Recordings
Videos
Albums
All Media
What's New
Reports
Statistics
Notes
Sources
Repositories
Contact Us